Music Education: Lens For Life (Blogathon #3)

This guest blog entry was written by Damien Riley. It's wonderful and I hope you enjoy it.

Music Education: Lens for Life

I was asked by Jessica the Rock Chick to write a "Guest Blog" post on the topic of "Music and Education: what it means to you." I was very flattered by the request and happy to do it. This was especially true for me as a teacher and a musician heavily influenced by music at a young age. What follows is my guest blog post for Life is Rantastic:

I was lucky enough to have music education in my elementary school years (1974-1980). I recall fondly the choir, the guitar classes, the violin, recitals, and even the recorder . . . all in a publicly funded school! As a teacher now in 2007, I can attest that the public school dollars are no longer spent on such things. School districts expend ridiculous amounts money to buy test prep, assessment computer systems, standardized practice tests, teacher training on how to teach the academic standards, and many other strictly academic "tools." Are they missing a shortcut to proficiency? All these academic standard items have been emphasized in American schools at the expense of the arts and the social aspects of education such as music, drawing, and the more tacit, or unspoken, aspects of citizenship. Music education teaches all these things and it's very inexpensive to implement.

FOR EXAMPLE:

Music taught me much in elementary school about those latter items. It also gave me a great outlet for my energy (which for me in those years was quite rambunctious). I learned to wait until the conductor said "begin." I learned how to recover from a mistake gracefully. I learned that you must be in tune to sound good. I learned that spatial combinations of notes make beautiful chords on a guitar, piano, recorder, or other instrument. Learning these things sent me on my way toward writing my own songs later and figuring out chords on my guitar up to now where I play music a local bars and coffee houses to audiences who also love music. Spatial recognition in music developed as a force that would later drive my freelance writing, university post-graduate work, my thesis, teaching plans, and other creative aspects of my fortunate life. I learned the rules of music are characteristic of the rules of the seasons, gravity, relationships, and any deconstructable system of signifiers in this universe. I started through my teens and beyond to look for the "spatial patterns" in life and I tried to master them. I was successful at several along the way . . . one by one as I tried to make sense of my youth.

Music made me more aware of patterns in math, in paragraphs, in topic sentences, conclusions, times tables, division, fractions, square roots, history, science . . . every discipline taught in school. And when I get on stage now at 38 and belt out a Neil Young song (for example) it's the result of a knowledge of patterns very closely resembling math and all the other things I mentioned. I can tell you that people respond to the patterns of rock n roll, but that's another post for my own site sometime!

By depriving kids of music in public schools we are giving them a "directive" to find their own way and to make sense of academics, as well as everything else in the human condition. We give them no rhyme, reason, or rhythm other than the rhythm of a test question and we tell them if they get the test right, they will get a candy -or- extra recess. (kind of like giving a good horse a sugar cube to lick) It will work for some, it will not work for all. AND, even for those it does work for, an amazing opportunity for understanding is denied. The lens of music education helps kids see life as a matrix or pattern. When all the outmoded tests and theories get thrown out on the last day of school, The kids take that lens with them into academia and into life for 80 years with luck or even less.

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UP NEXT: Q & A #2!